The outrageous threat to shut down City College signals a new escalation in the assault on the rights of students, teachers and all working people in San Francisco. CCSF is a vitally important institution that has provided education to hundreds of thousands of people and employees thousands of faculty and staff.
The real cause of the crisis in public education, from K-12, to community colleges, to universities, is the huge cutback in funding. The core of the charges against CCSF by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges is that it has not done enough cutting back, and that the administrators don’t have enough power.
Is the real aim to shut down CCSF, or, more likely, is it to massively slash its programs, campuses, faculty, staff and student body? Is the headline, “CCSF Faces Closure,” a form of psychological warfare, designed to “soften up” the people of SF in order to make huge cutbacks easier to accept later on?
Along with the cuts in education, all social programs have been slashed and then slashed again and again. At the same time, the bailed-out banks which played a key role in creating the crisis that led to huge cutbacks are sitting on mountains of cash.
Make the super-rich pay!
A tiny sliver of the California and U.S. population – the 1/100th of 1% – lives in obscene luxury, paying little if any in taxes. One California resident, Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle Co. has $36 billion in wealth, and just bought 98 percent of Lanai, the sixth largest island in Hawaii. Like a feudal lord on steroids, he owns mansions and estates all over California and around the world.
Here’s an idea for solving the budget crisis: Ellison didn’t “earn” $36 billion – no one could. He made his billions by exploiting tens of thousands of workers. His ill-gotten wealth should be taken over (he could keep one of many homes) and used to solve the state’s budget crisis. What’s more important: one individual’s right to wallow in unimaginable luxury or the right of millions of Californians to education, health care, housing and jobs? And Ellison is far from the only billionaire whose stolen riches could be used to solve society’s many problems.
Is this an advocacy of “class warfare?” Yes, most definitely. The reality is that “class warfare” has been going on ever since classes have existed. The problem is that for the last several decades the other side – the big banks, oil monopolies and other capitalist corporations – have been waging war on the working class and winning. It’s time to change that. All their wealth, made by ruthlessly exploiting millions of workers and the world’s resources, should be taken over and used for the benefit of society.
The Lindsay/Osorio PSL Presidential Campaign stands together with the students and workers of City College in rejecting any attempt to shut down CCSF or any of its programs. This is a fight we can and must win.
